


Reflecting Light

by vague_enthusiast



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Gangs, HIV/AIDS, Hurt/Comfort, Kinda, M/M, Past Violence, Songfic, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-01
Updated: 2017-09-01
Packaged: 2018-12-22 09:57:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,947
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11965026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vague_enthusiast/pseuds/vague_enthusiast
Summary: “Oh,” Remus says. Then, “Oh.”It is the beautiful man. And what’s more, the beautiful man has blood trickling slowly from his hairline.





	Reflecting Light

The man is beautiful.

 

There is simply no other way of putting it, Remus thinks, as he watches the black shape cross the street, turn the corner, and disappear.

 

The man had come from the apartment building two doors down from the coffee shop. Remus knows this because he had watched him fling open the plate glass doors and stride, like a challenge, out of Pearlpoint Apartments. Remus had stood for a moment, dishrag in hand, staring open-mouthed as the stranger stomped down the sidewalk toward him. Then, when he realized that if he didn’t move he would be run down, Remus had stepped aside and watched as the figure retreated.

 

Now he almost wishes that he had stayed put, had let the beautiful man mow him over. Perhaps then, he would have stopped to apologize, and they would be talking right now. Perhaps then, Remus would not be standing, staring after him into the growing darkness, getting shouted at by his boss.

 

After that, Remus sees the man nearly every evening. He is unsure of whether this is because the stranger is new to the neighborhood, or if now, some little part of him looks for the dark form whenever night begins to fall. He is almost like a new word, Remus reflects; once you learn the shape of it, you see it in everything.

 

So Remus watches, and Remus sees. But the man never comes inside.

 

One night, Remus is outside again, cleaning tables and stacking chairs. It had been a shit day; his favourite co worker had quit, and he had spilled a drink down his front and been forced to work the rest of the evening with macchiato-soaked shoes.

 

Which is why, when the stranger sits heavily in the chair he had been about to stack, Remus simply intones, “Fuck off.”

 

But the stranger does not fuck off. Indeed, the stranger makes no move to get up, or even issue a reply. Remus sighs, straightens, and fixes them with a glare.

 

Glinting black eyes glare right back.

 

“Oh,” Remus says. Then, “ _Oh._ ”

 

It is the beautiful man. And what’s more, the beautiful man has blood trickling slowly from his hairline. Remus watches it meet with a thick black eyebrow, disappear, then reappear on the man’s gleaming brow bone. It reaches the curve of his eyelid and forks: a line of red on the cheek, a shining crescent oozing slowly toward the nose. The man blinks, blinks again, then raises a battered hand to wipe it away.

 

 

 

Without thinking, Remus stops him. “You’ll just smear it around.”

 

“You,” says the man, and his voice is gravelly, as though he had just woken up, “Can fuck right off.”

 

And while Remus appreciates the symmetry of their conversation thus far, he plans to do no such thing. He simply stares for a moment, then asks, “Do you need a hospital? I can call--”

 

“No.” And the defiant gleam in the man’s eyes is enough to convince Remus that he won’t be swayed.

 

“Okay,” Remus says, and he draws the last syllable into a question. They stare at each other a while longer, and Remus notices that the man’s eyes keep losing their focus, and that his breathing hitches on every exhale.

 

“Can I… get you home? Do you live nearby?” As though he didn’t already know the answer.

 

“No.” And this time, a drop of panic hangs suspended in the stranger’s voice. “No, James would… It wouldn’t be good. I promised.”

 

_James?_ “Promised what?”

 

The man shakes his head, breaks their gaze. “I said I’d stay away from them, but-- they’ve got Reg, I couldn’t just leave him, I had to try and get him out. He’s just a kid, they’ll-- they’ll _turn_ him, he’s already half gone.”

 

“Who? Who’ll turn him?”

 

The man shuddered. “The Blacks.”

 

Remus has never heard of them, but the fear and the anger in the stranger’s voice tells him enough: that The Blacks are not to be fucked with. And this man, apparently, had fucked with them.

 

“Right.” Remus looks around, but the street is deserted. The coffee shop is empty, and he is closing alone. “Right,” he says to himself, once more. “So, you’ll come to mine, then.”

 

The man blinks, but does not offer any opposition. It seems that his outburst has drained him, and he is sliding slowly down in his seat, eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance.

 

“Up you get,” Remus says, looping the man’s arm round his shoulders. “C’mon.”

 

Once the man is up, Remus guides him in the direction opposite of Pearlpoint Apartments, toward the Shitty Part of Town. They weave round a homeless man squatting beneath a stoplight, and twice they nearly trip over the remnants of somebody’s makeshift home, torn apart, raided, dingy, damp on the grey sidewalk.

 

At last, they reach Remus’s flat. It is a second-storey affair, small with chipped-plaster walls, swinging light bulbs, threadbare furniture. He deposits the man on his couch, then excuses himself to the washroom. There, he carefully scoops up the pill bottles which litter the countertop, and places them in the cabinet above the sink. Then, he retrieves the first-aid kit and a pair of rubber gloves, and shuts the mirrored door. His own tired reflection stares back at him, dark circles accusing. He sighs, and stalks back out to the living room.

 

“Alright,” he says as he pulls the rubber gloves over his well-gnawed fingertips. “Well, um. My name is Remus?”

 

The man stares at Remus’s blue-clad hands. “I’m not diseased.”

 

“Nice to meet you, Not Diseased,” Remus quips, thinking of how proud his father would be and hoping to God that this line of conversation ends here.

 

“You’re not going to catch anything from my blood.”

 

“Okay,” Remus says, because he’s not sure what else he’s supposed to respond with,and because the other man could indeed catch something from his.

 

“I’m Sirius.”

 

“I believe you.” _Pushy fellow._

 

“No, that’s my name.”

 

“Oh.” Remus, familiar with the ritual of the Strange Name, skips over the usual fawning, and settles for, “Hello, Sirius.”

 

The corner of the man’s mouth twitches at the shape of his name on Remus’s lips. Remus hopes that this is a good thing.

 

“This’ll sting.”

 

All said and done, Sirius has a nasty cut on his forehead, a hand’s worth of split knuckles, and a sizeable bruise near the bottom of his ribcage. Remus checks his pupils, and they are responsive. “Not a concussion then,” he says. The glaze in Sirius’s eyes is a result of shock, and probably a bit of exhaustion.

 

He gets up, and busies himself with making tea. “Herbal? Green? Black?” He says the last one without thinking, and Sirius flinches.

 

“Herbal, please, no caffeine for me,” he rasps, once he recovers. “I should… find somewhere to sleep soon.”

 

Remus drops a bag of chamomile into a mug which declares its holder to be _Motherfucking Fancy_ , snags the kettle just before boiling, and says, “Sleep here.” The silence is filled with the hot burble of water and steam as he pours.

 

“Are you sure?” Sirius asks, as he accepts his cup.

 

Remus shrugs. “Why not? You’re already here.”

 

Sirius stares at him, sips, frowns. “You’re kind,” he says, as though it’s a punchline that needs mulling over before the joke can be funny.

 

Remus has been called many things, but _kind_ is rarely one of them. People do not often get that far. “You can take the bed.”

 

Remus doesn’t bother setting the couch up for sleep. Instead, once Sirius is safely tucked in with one of Remus’s oversized nightshirts on, Remus makes himself a strong cup of earl grey, and curls round a good book.

 

Every couple of hours, he gets up and cracks open the bedroom door, just to make sure that Sirius is breathing and moving as one should when merely asleep, and not dead or comatose due to an amateur diagnosis of Not A Concussion. Remus is fairly certain he made the right call, but he is worried all the same.

 

But when he peers into his bedroom at half three, in those strange hours where it isn’t quite night anymore but only a heathen would call it morning, Sirius is not in his bed. Remus lets the door swing open. The man is standing in the rectangular pool of moonlight his window makes, looking out.

 

“Oh, sorry,” Remus says, making to close the door. But there is something about Sirius’s swaying, as though he is up high somewhere being buffeted by the wind, that makes him pause. “Sirius?” He calls, softly.

 

There is no reply.

 

Remus approaches, cautiously, as though Sirius were a predator, or a porcelain cup. “Sirius?” He says again, but the man does not react. When Remus reaches him at last and sees the other man’s face, he understands.

 

Sirius is asleep. But his face, his face is twisted as though the moonlight is poison, an acid on his skin. Remus understands; there are nights when he, too, hates the moon, for all its silent judgement, laying bare the truths which hide themselves behind shafts of light in the daytime. Sirius sways again, dangerously this time, as though the window were a ledge.

 

“Sirius,” Remus murmurs. “Do not jump. Easy, easy.” He does not know if it is alright to touch Sirius, so he just stays close and whispers as soothingly as he can. Slowly the swaying eases, and the breathing hitches, and Sirius lowers himself into a shaky crouch.

 

“Mmm,” he groans, and the sound and his expression form a sort of snowglobe of his pain: shake it and it’ll go blank, hide the town, cover colour in fractured white.

 

Remus pulls him into a hug. “S’alright,” he says, even though it isn’t. “I’m here, I’ve got you.” He doesn’t know if that means anything at all to Sirius, that an impoverished and ailing stranger claims to ‘have him’. But the other man’s shoulders begin to relax, and Remus hopes that it means that Sirius is placated.

 

“To bed?”

 

Sirius nods, and Remus guides him back to the safety of cool sheets and darkness. When the other man does not let go, Remus allows himself to be pulled in with him, and curls around his shivering form, blanketing him with as much warmth as he can give. They fit together well, is Remus’s last thought before he drifts to into sleep.

 

When he wakes up, Sirius is upright beside him. He stretches, and the nightshirt he is wearing lifts, reveals smooth flesh. Remus swallows, and slides out of bed. “Breakfast?”

 

Sirius nods, expression unreadable. Remus thinks perhaps it is mistrust, or simply awkwardness at the strange situation they find themselves in. He wonders if his own face looks the same.

 

He disappears into the kitchen. Eggs, bacon from the freezer, his last bit of bread, and the coffee his father gave him for Christmas. He’s humming, and it’s a song that gets played over the speakers at the coffee shop. He lets himself sing the chorus, quietly so as not to bother Sirius:

 

“Now that I've worn out

I've worn out the world

I'm on my knees in fascination

Looking through the night

And the moon's never seen me before

But I'm reflecting light.”

 

When he brings the steaming plates into the living room, Sirius’s jacket is gone from the chair, and his boots are no longer by the door. Remus sets the plates down on the coffee table, walks into the kitchen, and pours himself a cup of coffee. He takes a sip. Then he looks at the clock, and goes to work.

**Author's Note:**

> To those of you who require a little more closure/hope, consider this the closing line:
> 
>  
> 
> **Maybe today, Sirius will come inside.**
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! This was a little out of my comfort zone in terms of style, but it was really cathartic to write. 
> 
> Also, the sketch of Sirius was created by yours truly! If you'd like to see more of my art, check out @vagueenthusiast on Tumblr.


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